ABSTRACT
This chapter considers strategies for analysing urban/metropolitan developments in a spatial context. Two aspects emerge. First, cities are interacting with more general regional and national systems (a nested structure, either bottom-up or top-down); and secondly, cities may sometimes display highly non-linear dynamic growth patterns (including bifurcation). The chapter outlines several crucial issues in analysing such developments. After some methodological aspects, spatial and dynamic impact patterns of urban and regional processes are considered. Subsequently, intra-metropolitan structures are discussed, with special attention to the industrial sector, the housing market and infrastructure. Regional and urban dynamics may display a smooth transition, but also a fast-changing (sometimes even catastrophic) type of behaviour. Bottlenecks to development in the housing sector can be caused by: absence of sufficient public funds; negative expectations of potential movers concerning their future job position and/or income level; interest rates; pollution; and shortage of building space.
